I tried 0.35m (the tale of which is in their forum...a disastrous waste of time), 0.35k, some 0.34 versions, and now it is at 0.35a2.

Seems to me that it must have an old h/w revision which makes it barf on newer F/W and there seems to be no way to get it back to the original 0.33g since it is past the impenetrable barrier which is passed when a user installs F/W 0.34 or higher.

I would guess that Ectaco made h/w changes quite silently as time progressed and that there is a limitation of some kind in this one bought more than a year ago and that it may even be a great deal older and I got 'old shelf stock' when I bought it...

If I could somehow magically & completely erase it and at least get the 0.33g F/W into it again then maybe it would become something like the originally somewhat flakey thing it WAS before I 'upgraded' it to get the better PDF support - instead of the 100% totally flakey thing it is NOW.